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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23850766">MadMax</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmuseau/pseuds/Darkmuseau'>Darkmuseau</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Royal Romance (Visual Novel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:01:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,832</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23850766</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmuseau/pseuds/Darkmuseau</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened between Maxwell and Adelaide all those years ago, and what Madeleine knew.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Maxwell Beaumont/Duchess Adelaide, Maxwell Beaumont/Madeleine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>MadMax</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>June 2006</p><p>“Hey, I got that CD you wanted to borrow,” he said, stepping into Maddie’s room. Things certainly were getting friendlier between the two of them lately, or at the very least, much less formal.</p><p>“Thanks, Max,” she smiled at him. “I didn’t realize you’d be around today, what do you have going on?”</p><p>“Oh, you know, the usual, estate stuff I’m sure,” he smiled back. “How about you, Mad?”</p><p>“The same, I’m sure,” she returned back to her computer screen. “Making it all work, as always.”</p><p>“I’m sure,” he said. “Anyway, here it is. Take your time with it, I already burned a copy for myself for the old squid stereo. Title track is the best one, but all of them are pretty okay.”</p><p>“Thanks, Max, just put it in the old to-do pile I guess,” Maddie said, her eyes darting back and forth across the computer screen, checking figures. </p><p>It was warm, he thought to himself as he placed the CD atop a few loose papers. He didn’t think there would ever be more heat, probably. It would certainly never be HOT between the two of them. Maybe the best he could hope for was toasty. But warmth had so much appeal in his life, even in a totally unromantic, friendship-with-an-understanding kind of a way. Any existing familial warmth was in spastic, seasonal bursts now and then on occasions like clinking his mulled wine glass come every Christmas with Bertrand, then the burst immediately being completely and unceremoniously snuffed out by the inescapable realization of all those glaringly missing and terribly missed. If he were being quite honest with himself, Max knew the sun in his life had died the day his mother had.</p><p>But Maddie. She was shaping up to be a good friend to him. Maybe that was all one could hope for in life. If he played his cards right, he suddenly thought, maybe they could do one of those pact things where if either of them happened to be embarrassingly single too late, the other would mercifully marry them. Even thinking it he had to laugh at himself. He knew it was far too much to hope for, so he didn’t. Nothing had ever transpired between them romantically. It was just so good to have a friend, any friend.</p><p>“X-Men 3 was fun,” she said, smiling sideways at him. “I’m starting to get what you mean about enjoying bad movies.”</p><p>“That one definitely seemed to prove my point! How fortuitous,” he smiled absently. Christ, who needed hot? This was fine. Who even had hot? Was hot even attainable? Did his parents...not his business, not his business one bit. Warm was good enough for them, so it was good enough for him. “Yeah that one was...woof!”</p><p>“I got that picture we took after, in the photo booth,” she said. Maddie pulled a secret drawer out in her desk and suddenly Max’s thoughts raced from warm to toasty to OH MY GOSH WHAT IF SHE’S A SECRET SPY, back to oh of course, she just said she was bringing out the picture.</p><p>“Gosh, I didn’t realize you’d be so excited, Max, you are having some kind of a face journey over there,” she said, holding the picture out, smiling at him.</p><p>“Never mind that,” he said, taking the picture with a mild smirk. “I was only thinking if maybe there would be more Wolverine movies in the future.“</p><p>“Que sera, sera I guess,” Maddie said, turning back to the computer. Max finally had a chance to look at the picture. </p><p>He was struck right away by how happy the two of them were in each of the four poses. She looked like she was having a great time in spite of herself. He didn’t outwardly embarrass her in any pose. Each pose in each picture was fun without losing dignity. Maddie was destined for great things, everyone knew and had said as much since they were tiny baby kids. This wouldn’t stop her from being queen. He was her friend, and a good backup, if she ever needed one. She had written on the bottom of the pictures, “MadMax.”</p><p>“MadMax, huh?” he said. “Can I keep this?” </p><p>“Sure,” she said, blushing a little. “I’ve got to work seriously now, but we can catch up later.” Her eyes kept darting back and forth on the computer screen. </p><p>“See you later, Mad,” he walked up the stairs. Duchess Adelaide had sent for him to discuss estate matters. He was sure it was something about a check being cleared or a matter that needed minding. He placed the pictures in his right front pocket and knocked on her door. </p><p>—————————<br/>
It was much later when Maddie heard Max’s slow, heavy footsteps coming down the stairs again. “Oh hey!” she leaned out her room. He stopped walking and looked up at her. He looked troubled. </p><p>“Is everything okay? That took a long time today,” Maddie said.</p><p>“It...” Maxwell seemed to suddenly have a thousand yard stare. “I guess it took as long as it took,” he said with a small voice.</p><p>Maddie looked him over. “I won’t keep you,” she said as gently as she could. She wanted to do more but had no idea what. What could she say without crossing a line? What had possibly happened to make him this serious?</p><p>He nodded. “Talk soon,” he said, betraying no emotion in his voice.</p><p>Maddie waited until she heard his footsteps at her front door, and the sounds of the front door slowly opening and slowly closing, then walked upstairs to her mother’s room.</p><p>——————-</p><p>It was just a day, Max told himself. It was just a day. He woke up today and he’d go to bed at the end of it and that’s all there was to it. Nothing more, nothing less.</p><p>He listened to the sound of his feet walking away from Maddie’s family estate. It was late, and silent. </p><p>Plenty of people have days like today and are much worse off, Max thought. He wasn’t the first man to get blackmailed. He couldn’t be.</p><p>How was he to know, waking up this morning, what would happen today. He supposed he should have stayed in bed, he thought. </p><p>If he had, he also thought, he wouldn’t have gotten that picture from Maddie.</p><p>But then...</p><p>But then Adelaide wouldn’t have held it up in front of him after wriggling it out of his right front pocket with a squeal. </p><p>“She’s so important to you, isn’t she, Max Percy?”</p><p>He tried to shake her voice out of his mind. He took a deep breath of the outside. He needed air. He felt as though he had been drowning in her perfume for hours.</p><p>Breathe. Don’t think of her. Don’t think of it. Don’t.</p><p>So much for warmth, he thought bitterly. And heat, for that matter. So much for love. So much for respect. </p><p>“You’re mine, Max Percy, boy, do you hear?”</p><p>And he was. For so many disgusting moments in spite of himself he was. What other choice did he have? Where did consent enter into the picture? He was 19, and she was the wife of his father’s friend. In what possible world could he refuse her? </p><p>Here he had been silently worrying about messing things up with Maddie somehow, crossing a line or a joke that wasn’t funny. It was him all along. He was the joke, and he had messed everything up now so completely it could never be fixed between them. That pact, the warmth, the dream that never was, that he never dared to think of, was absolutely impossible. He only belonged to Adelaide now.</p><p>—————<br/>
June 2007</p><p>He’d had enough. It had been an entire year of his life he’d never get back but by God, he was taking his life back from Adelaide today. Lord knows she had taken more than enough from him. He’d never get that back either, not that it mattered very much to him at all, he thought, it was a societal construct after all. But he had wanted so badly to share that experience with someone special and now he would never have that chance. All of it went toward her selfishness.</p><p>“It’s been a year,” he heard himself say. He stood before her; she, sitting in front of him, at her desk. They both had clothes on, for once.</p><p>“So it has,” she said enigmatically. She smiled.</p><p>He grimaced. “Don’t. This is done.”</p><p>“What do you think you’re talking about—“</p><p>“I said, DON’T.” He said the last word slightly louder, but the fire in his eyes seemed to make the word more powerful. He continued, “The way I see it, Adelaide, is you’ve held your first transgression against me over my head for one year. And you keep making me come back.”</p><p>“Oh, I make you, do I?” Adelaide smiled ruefully.</p><p>“Yeah, you do,” he said. “This isn’t a relationship. You’ve been blackmailing me for a year. Most people? Most people, Adelaide? Don’t have to make people keep coming back by texting them ‘Get here or I’m telling,’ okay?”</p><p>He took out a burner phone from his left front pocket and cracked it in half and dropped it like a microphone onto the desk in front of Adelaide. </p><p>“Tell anyone you like. I’ll be happy to tell the police, then, too,” he said. He turned around and walked away. Just before leaving the room completely he looked over his shoulder at Adelaide. The two made eye contact.</p><p>He reflected only to himself in that moment how withered and dried up she suddenly looked all at once at her desk. But he knew that was one of her tricks. Guilt and pity were her personal bread and butter. He knew her far more than he ever would have liked to, but there it was. He said nothing and walked away.</p><p>Just before leaving the estate completely, Max finally crossed paths with the person he had successfully been able to avoid for an entire year.</p><p>“Hi, Maddie,” he said. He didn’t smile. He didn’t feel like it. “Long time no see,” he tried. It was his last stab at diplomacy. He gave it everything he got.</p><p>“Really?” Maddie’s face looked like a death mask. “I’ve seen you around here quite a bit.”</p><p>The air seemingly sparkled and cracked between the two of them.</p><p>“You just couldn’t let me have that one shred of dignity, could you?” he said with obvious pain in his eyes. “You knew...and you did nothing?”</p><p>Maddie looked at Max for the first time ever.</p><p>“It wasn’t...?”</p><p>“Tell me what you knew, Maddie. Tell me what you knew right now.”</p><p>————</p><p>June 2006</p><p>Maddie marched into her mother’s room as Adelaide sat at her desk, rolling up her nude left stocking slowly. “Madeleine,” she said without emotion.</p><p>“What’s going on? Why did Maxwell Beaumont leave here looking so upset?”</p><p>“None of your business.”</p><p>Maddie cocked an eyebrow at her mother.</p><p>“Let’s call it an adult affair and leave it at that.” Adelaide cocked her eyebrow right back at Maddie.</p><p>“Fine,” Maddie said, fixing her face into a straight line. “Whatever Lola wants...does Father know?”</p><p>“Don’t be a child,” Adelaide said, deftly finding and lighting a cigarette. “Your father always knows. He happened to think up this one himself, he said it amused him greatly.”</p><p>“I...didn’t need to know that about him. Or you,” Maddie said slowly, looking at the ground.</p><p>“Grow up, girl,” Adelaide scolded. “Get with it. Aren’t you training to be queen? And you’re worried about me and a lesser lord? Make better use of your time. That’s all, Madeleine.”</p><p>Adelaide glowered at Maddie until she turned to leave, then glowered after her long after the door had closed.</p><p>——-—-</p><p>June 2007</p><p>Maddie looked at Max, who stared at the ground, saying nothing, not moving a millimeter for eons. It was unbearable. She waited. He looked up at her. His expression was completely unreadable. “I see.”</p><p>There was another long pause.</p><p>Finally, Maxwell said, “Madeleine, I promise you that I will always be an ally to your house and cordial to you in public.” Then he began to walk away.</p><p>Maddie realized at once what this meant and her entire body filled with panic. She knew she should let him go. That he was hurt, so indescribably hurt by her inaction. He couldn’t know that she didn’t realize what had transpired. That she had wanted to think the best of her mother. How horrified she was to be wrong. How she knew she could never make it up to him. How much she had missed the timid warmth between them. How much she had missed his friendship, which was like a light in the darkness.</p><p>All she could manage was, “What about in private?”</p><p>Immediately after saying this, Maddie realized the depth of her regret.</p><p>It wouldn’t be fair to say that Max turned around like the Terminator, although he himself would appreciate the analogy, especially here in this, the darkest timeline.</p><p>But when he turned around and looked at Maddie, she saw the doors inside of his eyes, those always open to everyone, close to her forever. The only thing that looked back at her was the mask. </p><p>“I guess you need me to be more explicit, then. Alright. We aren’t friends anymore. All the joy and grace we shared is gone forever, and it’s because you didn’t help me.” The last four words were spoken in a whisper, almost a desperate prayer. His voice was steady the entire time, but in the last four words, Madeleine saw tears form in his eyes. He blinked them back. She saw that, too.</p><p>“And another thing, Madeleine, because you’re so concerned with optics? How about you be in charge of everyone we know calling me by my full name from now on. No more of this Max shit, from now on I’m Maxwell and that’s it.”</p><p>“But your mother—“</p><p>“My mother,” Maxwell almost spat the words out at Madeleine. “can’t help me anymore. And the only person I belong to from now on is me.”</p><p>They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds more.</p><p>“Did you even listen to that CD?” he finally said.</p><p>“No,” she whispered. Every time she looked at it she remembered how sad he had looked and didn’t pick it up. She didn’t dare say it. It was too late now.</p><p>“Title track,” he said, walking away. “See you at the next ball.”</p><p>Madeline walked to her room, alone. She found the CD. It was buried under half a dozen bureaucratic memos. She put it into her own stereo. She let the music wash over her, and she cried.</p><p>Step one, you say we need to talk<br/>
He walks, you say sit down, it's just a talk<br/>
He smiles politely back at you<br/>
You stare politely right on through<br/>
Some sort of window to your right<br/>
As he goes left, and you stay right<br/>
Between the lines of fear and blame<br/>
You begin to wonder why you came<br/>
Where did I go wrong?<br/>
I lost a friend<br/>
Somewhere along in the bitterness<br/>
And I would have stayed up with you all night<br/>
Had I known how to save a life<br/>
Let him know that you know best<br/>
Cause after all, you do know best<br/>
Try to slip past his defense<br/>
Without granting innocence<br/>
Lay down a list of what is wrong<br/>
The things you've told him all along<br/>
And pray to God he hears you<br/>
And I pray to God he hears you<br/>
Where did I go wrong?<br/>
I lost a friend<br/>
Somewhere along in the bitterness<br/>
And I would have stayed up with you all night<br/>
Had I known how to save a life<br/>
As he begins to raise his voice<br/>
You lower yours and grant him one last choice<br/>
Drive until you lose the road<br/>
Or break with the ones you've followed<br/>
He will do one of two things<br/>
He will admit to everything<br/>
Or he'll say he's just not the same<br/>
And you'll begin to wonder why you came<br/>
Where did I go wrong?<br/>
I lost a friend<br/>
Somewhere along in the bitterness<br/>
And I would have stayed up with you all night<br/>
Had I known how to save a life<br/>
Where did I go wrong?<br/>
I lost a friend<br/>
Somewhere along in the bitterness<br/>
And I would have stayed up with you all night<br/>
Had I known how to save a life<br/>
How to save a life<br/>
How to save a life<br/>
Where did I go wrong?<br/>
I lost a friend<br/>
Somewhere along in the bitterness<br/>
And I would have stayed up with you all night<br/>
Had I known how to save a life<br/>
Where did I go wrong?<br/>
I lost a friend<br/>
Somewhere along in the bitterness<br/>
And I would have stayed up with you all night<br/>
Had I known how to save a life</p>
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